(Almost) Vegan Banana Bread

"I don't know if there's a thing as a Banana Bread aficionado, but if there is, I'm pretty sure I'm getting close to becoming one.  "

There are some recipes I make here in France that are immediately a huge hit: the first being pancakes (with maple syrup and butter of course!) and the second being banana bread.  As I mentioned previously, banana bread is one of my favorite things to eat, but at a whopping 400+ calories a serving...well, lets just say you can eat better things!

Recently we had people stay over at our place and in the morning I wanted to make them pancakes.  I opened the cupboards, took out all my ingredients, turned to the fridge and realized that I had no more eggs!  Who says "no eggs" says "(almost) vegan", but I sat there thinking to myself: "but how will the pancakes stick together without any eggs?!"  Then I shrugged and said "oh well...better to try it than not eat anything...and plus, all these vegans can't be wrong.  They've got to eat something!"

So I found this recipe and tried it out and it worked!  I ended up substituting real milk for soymilk and adding chopped up peaches and cherries, but they still worked out really well, and tasted just like real pancakes!

Then I had some bananas that I had put in the freezer a while ago because they were about to go rotten and since I was on an (almost) vegan kick, I said to myself "why not?"

This recipe was inspired by this one, if you vegans are out there looking for some new recipes.

This is what I came up with (and seriously, this banana bread is simply to die for.  It might almost be better than the real thing!):

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This recipe is vegetarian: yes!
This recipe is vegan: no (but can be easily adapted to be so)

Serves: 10
Calories per serving: 267

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What you'll need:

- 2 Cups All Purpose Flour
- 1 Cups Sour Creme (or 1 C soymilk or almond milk or coconut milk for you vegans)
- 1/4 Cup Maple Syrup
- 1/2 Cup Sugar
- 1/2 Cup Light Brown Sugar
- 1 TBSP Baking Soda
- 4 Medium Bananas (extra ripe)
- 1 TBSP Cinnamon
- Oil to grease pan (or butter)

Lets get cooking!

-Preheat oven to 350F (180C)

- In a bowl put the sour creme, maple syrup, white and brown sugars and baking soda.  Mix together until smooth.

- Add bananas to the mixture and mix until completely incorporated.

- Add the flour and mix until smooth.

- Grease your 9 x 5 bread pan and add about 3/4 of the batter.  Sprinkle the cinnamon over the top so that it's all covered (if you want more cinnamon, feel free to put as much as you want!)

- Pour the rest of the batter into the pan.

- Bake in the preheated oven for about an hour or until a knife when inserted into the center of the bread comes out clean.

- Let cool until the pan is no longer hot and, then place it on a rack to cool completely before serving.  If you cut it when it's too hot, due to the fact that there are no eggs, it will fall apart.

Enjoy!

Banana Bread Muffins and Banana Bread Cinnamon Swirl Muffins

"So good!"

Banana bread is by far my most favorite thing to eat ever.  You can't go wrong with it.  I introduced it to V a while ago, and he fell in love with it.  We've started doing a banana bread/fruitcake mix now, which isn't too bad.  He loves it, but I'm not a big fan of the candied fruits, but hey.  It's still delicious!

What's good about this recipe is that they don't take an hour to bake like normal banana bread, and you can save them and bring them for a snack, or pack in your kids' lunch boxes!

Not down with the muffin theme?  This recipe also makes enough for a regular sized banana bread.  Just grease a bread pan and bake for about an hour or so!

For vegans: if someone tries this recipe out by replacing the one egg with a banana, could you tell me if it works out?

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This recipe is vegetarian: yes!

This recipe is vegan: no

Serves: 16

Calories per serving: 182

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What you'll need:

- 250g 2 C all purpose flour --> You can also do a mix of flour, ground almonds and ground hazelnuts (we all know I love it!)
- 125g (1 stick) of butter (really soft)
- 200g (1 C) sugar
- 1 egg
- 4 bananas (the riper the better!)
- 1 TSP vanilla extract
- pinch of salt
- 2 TSP Baking Powder
- 1/2 C walnuts or pecans (optional)
- 1 TSBP Cinnamon + 80g (1/3 C) Sugar (optional)

Let's get cooking!

- Preheat your oven to 180C (350F)

- In a bowl cream together the butter and sugar.  (If you don't have an electric mixer, see this video!  It's got a cute Australian woman and everything!)

-Add the egg, vanilla and the bananas.  There are so many bananas, because I've found that taking out an egg and adding a banana in its place makes for a really soft and tender banana bread.

-When all that's light and fluffy, add the flour (or flour and ground nuts) and salt little by little, making sure the mixture is well incorporated before adding the next bit.  (If you've got an electric mixer, just use it to mix everything.  It makes for a really light and fluffy bread)

- When it's all well mixed, add the nuts if you'd like.

-If you're making the cinnamon swirl muffins or bread, put the mix in until it comes halfway up the side, then sprinkle a good amount of cinnamon sugar, cover and sprinkle again.

- Fill your cupcake pan with mix, leaving a little space for the muffin to rise!

- Put in the pre-heated oven for 20-25 minutes or until the tops are golden brown and a toothpick, when stich in the middle, comes out clean!

Garden Tofu Laktas

"So succulent!"

When I started this recipe, I wanted to do more of a garden tofu burger, but they didn't work out too well.  The thing with tofu is that it splits apart really easily, and the middle stays raw, without much flavor, so these quickly turned into latkas.  

We eat a lot of zucchini and carrots here, because they're really cheap, plus they're delicious, so we don't really have any problems with eating them all the time.  

We discovered an asian market close to us with a bunch of stuff thats not expensive, and lets us branch out and eat things we wouldn't normally be able to.  They also have jars of peanut butter that aren't expensive, which over here is a miracle.  French people don't really like peanut butter, which means that when you do find it, it's ridiculously expensive.  But I digress...

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This recipe is vegetarian: yes!

This recipe is vegan: no

Serves: 3

Calories per serving: 614

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What you'll need:

- 1 small onion

- 3 small carrots

- 1 small zucchini 

- 500g hard tofu (normal tofu)

- 4-5 TBSP flour

- 1 egg

- a sliver of butter (to grease a pan)

- 5-6 TBSP oil to use to fry in pan (I used olive oil, but it's up to you)

- Shredded cheese (cheddar, mozzerella or swiss - optional)

 Lets get cooking!

- Thinly slice the carrots, zucchini and onion (as finely as you can).

(For Christmas we got a gift card to a cooking store, and bought a "mandoline."  I don't know what the English word is, but it's basically a thing that slices whatever you want really thinly, which helped a lot for this recipe!)

- Heat a pan over medium heat, when hot add the butter to the pan and let melt.  Add all the veggies and sauté until they're soft, but still a little bit crunchy.  This will take about 10 minutes.  If you cut your carrots into fairly big chunks, you should add them first for about 5-10 minutes and then add the zucchini and onion.  Carrots always take more time to cook.

- While your veggies are sautéing, in a bowl crumble the tofu (it will look like cottage cheese) and add the egg and flour.  Mix together.

- When the veggies are done sautéing, add the to tofu mixture and mix.

- Heat up another pan with about a tablespoon of oil.

- When it's really hot, form a small ball of tofu mix and put in the pan, squishing it out with the spatula in the pan.  I found that if I tried to make the patties thin before putting them in the pan they were much more likely to break.  They should be fairly small...about the side of a coaster.

(The original "burgers" I wanted to do, but they ended up falling apart in the pan!)

- Let the latkas fry up for about 4 minutes, or until golden brown.  Flip and let brown on the other side. I found that I needed 2 spatulas to flip them.  It made it much easier, and there was much less breakage.

- When nice and brown, set on a plate.

- Repeat the "patty" process until all the tofu mix has been used.  With every new batch, add a tablespoon of oil.  I ended up getting a good 15-20 latkas out of my mix.  For some of them I added some shredded cheese.  

Surprisingly, these taste really good with an apple sauce dip.  If you want, make a special dip with a 1:1 ratio of apple sauce and sour creme.  It's awesome.  

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Quand j'ai commencé à cuisiner, je voulais faire un espèce de "hamburger" au tofu, mais malheureusement,  ils n'ont pas bien marché.  Le souci avec le tofu c'est qu'il casse facilement, et au milieu il n'y a pas le même goût, et il reste à moitié cuit, donc, ils sont devenus les galettes.

On a découvert un marché asiatique tout près de chez nous, avec beaucoup de choses pas chers, qui nous permets de trouver et manger les repas qui ne se trouvent pas normalement sur notre table. Le tofu se trouve facilement là-bas, et n'est pas cher du tout!


Vous aurez besoin de:

- 1 petit oignon
- 3 petites carottes
- 1 petite courgette
- 500g de tofu
- 1 oeuf
- 4-5 cuillères à soupe de farine
- du beurre (pour faire sauter les legumes dans la poêle)
- 4 à 5 cuillères à soupe de l'huile (j'ai utilisé huile d'olive, mais tout marche)
- Emmenthal rapé (optionnel)

Cuisinons!  

- Coupe les carottes, courgette et onion en tranches fines.  Le plus fin possible.  

- Fait chauffer une poêle sur feu moyen et quand c'est chaud, rajoute le beurre et laisse fondre.  Ajoute tous les legumes en même temps et les faire sauter jusqu'à ce qu'ils sont mou, mais toujours croquantes.  Cela va prendre une dizaine de minutes.  Si tu as coupé les carottes assez gros, il faut les mettre dans la poêle d'abord pendant 5-10 minutes et puis rajouter les autres legumes, car elles prennent beaucoup plus de temps à cuire.  

- Pendant que les legumes sont dans la poêle, dans un bol à côté, émiette le tofu et rajoute l'oeuf et la farine.  Mélange tout. 

- Quand les legumes ont finis, rajoute-les au bol avec le tofu et mélangez bien.  

- Dans une autre poêle, faire chauffer de l'huile.  Quand elle est assez chaude, fait des petites boulettes de mélange tofu et mettre dans la poêle, et écrase la avec la spatule.  Il faut que les galettes soient assez plats, et j'ai trouvé que si j'ai essayé de les aplatir à la main avant de les mettre dans la poêle, elles se cassaient.   

-Laisse les galettes fritter et dorer pendant 4-5 minutes, ou jusqu'à ce qu'elles ont une bonne couleur, puis retournez les.  Laisse dorer de cette côte.  

- Quand elles sont suffisamment cuites, mettez les sur une assiette.  

- Répéte les étapes dans la poêle jusqu'à ce que vous avez utilisé toute la mélange de tofu.  J'ai fait entre 15-20 petite galettes.  

Si tu te sens assez courageux, faire une petite sauce en compote de pomme.  Il passe nickel!  Ou tu peux faire une mélange compote et crème fraiche!

Strawberry and Peach Crumble

"There were peaches in there?"

So, this recipe might not qualify as too healthy, but Crumble is still a dessert that I love, but somehow forget about it until I eat it and remember how amazing it is.  

We found some strawberries on sale which were about to expire, and had some canned peaches in the house, so I decided to whip this up.  Again, this is another really simple recipe that I thought would be much more difficult.  

I got the basics for this recipe from The Guardian, a British newspaper (which is also cited in a bunch of my classes to prepare for my big exam, but that's getting a little off topic).  The article gives a whole bunch of precisions, different ways to make crumble, the effects of freezing the dough etc., different kinds of flour and sugar, but we're not that complicated here.  You should go check it out though.

A good thing about crumble: you can use pretty much any fruit you want.  I know the most common kind is apple, but my mom makes a killer blueberry crumble.  A red-fruit mix might be awesome as well!  You can also use frozen fruits or canned fruits, as long as they're thawed out/drained, which is nice, because you can buy canned or frozen fruits (and veggies!) for much cheaper and in general there's more, so you can make a bunch of stuff with it!

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This recipe is vegetarian: yes!

This recipe is vegan: no

Serves: 6

Calories per serving: 343

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What you'll need:

- 900g - 1kg of fruit (about 1/2 a pound)

- 150g (1 C) All purpose flour

- 25g (1/8 C) Ground Hazelnut  (optional)

- 25g (1/8 C) Ground Almond (optional)

- 70 g (1/4 C) Sugar

- 125g (1 stick) butter , chilled.

- A handfull of oats or nuts (optional)

Let's get cooking!

-Pre-heat your oven to 200C (400F)

- Put your butter, flour and sugar in a blender (if you don't have one, which is my case, use your hands or a fork) and pulse until it's all incorporated, but looks like large breadcrumbs.  Put this batter in the fridge or freezer (if the butter got really melted during the process, put in the freezer.  If not, the fridge is fine).

- Cut your fruit and place in a shallow cooking pan (this gives a good fruit to topping ratio, but you can probably cook this in a deeper pan as well).  In the article where I got this recipe, they sprinkle more sugar on top of the fruit, but I decided not to.

Here's my strawberry, peach mix.

- Take the dough out of the fridge (or freezer) and sprinkle on top of the fruit.  Don't pat down.  My crumbs were more chunks, and the butter got really soft, so they ended up freezing together in the freezer, but you can break them up with your hands and spread them out over the fruit, and it all turns out the same.

- Cook in the oven for about 30 minutes, or until the top is a golden brown color and the fruit juices are bubbling.

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Donc, cette recette ne se qualifie pas comme super saine, mais le crumble est un déssert que j'adore.  Je l'adore autant plus car j'oublie souvent qu'il existe, et quand je le retrouve, je l'aime encore plus!

Au marché on a trouvé des fraises et on avait des pêches en boite, et voilà la naissance de ce crumble!  C'est une recette super facile.

J'ai trouvé les bases de cette recette dans un article de The Guardian, un journal britannique.  Pur ceux qui lisent bien l'anglais, ce lien peut apporter des précisions sur les futures recettes, et les differences dans les ingrédiants et leur apport au goût.  Moi, je suis assez pas une personne aussi compliquée que ça.

Quelque chose que j'aprecie avec le crumble est que tu peux utiliser n'importe quel fruit.  Le plus commun est à la pomme, mais ma mère en fait un superbe au myrtilles.  Je pense qu'un au fruits rouges sera pas mal aussi.  Tu peux utiliser également les fruits en boite et les fruits congelés, si tu les a suffisamment égouté ou décongelé.  

Tu auras besoin de:

- 900g - 1kg de fruit 

- 150g de farine

- 25g poudre de noisette  (optional)

- 25g poudre d'amande (optional)

- 70 g sucre

- 125g beurre froid

- Une poignée de noix (optionnel)

Cuisinons!

-Pré-chauffer le four à 200C pendant 10 minutes.

- Mets le beurre, farine et sucre dans un mixeur (si tu en as un, sinon, utilise tes mains ou une fourchette) et mélange jusqu'à ce qu'il ressemble des miettes de pain.  Mets dans le frigo ou congél. (si le beurre a beaucoup fondu, mets le dans le congél, sinon, le frigo marche parfaitement bien).

- Coupe les fruits et mets les dans un bol en céramique peu profond.  Tu peux aussi mettre quelques pincées de sucre sur les fruits si tu veux. Personnellement, je ne l'ai pas fait.

Voici ma mélange de fraises et pêches!

- Sortir le bol avec la mélange farine sucre du frigo ou congél et saupoudrer sur les fruits.  

- Mets au four pendent 30 minutes, ou jusqu'à ce qu'il soit doré.  

Mini Quiche

"Do I have to wait until dinner?"

I have always loved quiche, and mini ones are often served at parties as appetizers.  The only problem I have with it is that there are so many delicious options for quiche, yet, when you make one, you have to choose just one.  I love Quiche Lorraine (bacon, cheese and onions), but I equally love Spinach and Goat Cheese Quiche.  Unfortunately, the two do not go very well together.  Other things I love in quiche: mushrooms, tomatoes, potatoes, leeks...pretty much anything you can think of.  

Thus the idea for the one person quiche.  Mini quiche sounds cuter, but in reality, it's about equal to a slice of quiche.  I'm not going to lie...I came up with this because we had some pie crust lying around (but if you make your own, it's so much better!) and we got some mini pie crusts for Christmas, and I've been trying to find excuses to use them for something!

This is a good recipe to use up ingredients you've got lying around that you're not going to use in anything else, because it takes so little of each.

FYI: this recipe does yield enough for a regular sized quiche too, if you're not feelin' the "mini." Depending on how many you make, this could be a lot of egg.  I made 8, a little bit smaller than my hand, and I have about enough egg leftover to make myself a nice breakfast tomorrow morning!

What you'll need:

- 4 eggs

- 2 cups milk (or cream)

- salt and pepper to taste.

That is seriously all a quiche is.  I was really surprised too.  For the additional things, just choose what you want and lay it at the bottom of the pie dish.

This time I made 3 variations:

Quiche Lorraine:  (I ended up making 4 of them)

- 100g of bacon (about 1/4 pound of bacon)

- One medium onion

- Shredded mozzarella or emmenthal (swiss) cheese (about a handfull).

Spinach and Goat Cheese:

- About 6-8 leaves of spinach (or more if you want) for each quiche.

- One slice of goat cheese per quiche

Tomato and Goat Cheese:

- One slice of tomato per quiche

- One slice of goat cheese per quiche.

Lets get cooking!

- If you're making the quiche Lorraine, start by cooking up your bacon.  (Over here, bacon isn't really the same thing.  It's like little bacon bits instead of slices.  So I cook up my bacon and onion at the same time.  If you're feeling up to it, cut the bacon in bits raw and add it together).  If you don't cook the bacon and onion at the same time, take out your bacon and cook the onion in the fat left behind.

-If you're not making Quiche Lorraine, start here!

-Pre-heat your oven to 425F (220C).

- Break the 4 eggs in a large bowl and add the 2 cups of milk.  Add salt and pepper to taste and then whisk it all together until it's homogenous.  

-If you're using a pre-made crust, lay your mini pie tins on top and cut around, making it so that when it's in the pan, there's a good amount of overhang:

- Fill the pie crust by putting your ingredients in the bottom of it.  Mine were full pretty much to the top, but don't pack the ingredients in the crust.

(Quiche Lorraine)

(Top: Tomato and Goat Cheese 

Bottom: Quiche Lorraine)

- Take the excess crust and fold it over to make a nice edge.  This will also help a little with runoff as the crust gets a little puffy and expands in the oven.

- Put a piece of tin foil on a baking sheet (there will probably be run off) and put the mini tins on it.  Add the egg mixture so that with the ingredients it comes almost to the top (see picture below).  I used an ice cream scoop as a ladle. 

- Pop those babies in the pre-heated oven and cook for about 30 mins.  Cooking time will change based on the size of the quiche.  If you're making a size that's smaller than these, start with 10-15 minute increments.  The quiche will be done when you can stick a toothpick in an eggy part and have it come out clean.  

-Once they're nice and baked, take them out of the oven to cool.  Once completely cooled, take out of the mini pans (and start again!)

(Top left: Spinach and Goat Cheese

Top Left: Quiche Lorraine

Bottom: Tomato and Goat Cheese)

How delicious!

Quinoa and Veggie Stir Fry

"If I had people coming over, this is what I'd serve them."

From what I've heard, quinoa is like a new super food.  I've never been too keen on it, and it's not something I will actively seek out in the grocery store, but some was given to us, so I thought I'd give it a try and find a nice recipe to cook up.

I ended up finding one which was basically cooked quinoa with some veggies on the side, but I decided to mix it all up together, so there are fewer dishes to wash afterwords.  Points for being lazy!  

This recipe is really simple, but it takes some time.

Here it is:

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This recipe is vegetarian: yes

This recipe is vegan: yes

Serves: 3

Calories per serving: 387

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What you'll need:

- 1 C quinoa

- 1 Zucchini

- 2-3 medium carrots

- 1 large onion

- One Bouillon cube (seasoning of your choice.  I tend to stick with veggie, but it's really up to you)

- About a cup of water
- The juice from half a lemon

-2 TBSP olive oil

- A handfull of slivered almonds

- Fried tofu (optional)

Lets get cooking!

- Place the cup of quinoa in a bowl and cover with water.  Let sit.

- Peel and slice your carrots in rounds.  Wash the zucchini and cut both ends off (leaving the skin) and cut in rounds like the carrot.

- Put the oil in a sauce pan on medium heat, and cutting your onion fairly finely.

- When the pan is hot enough, add the onion and enjoy that nice sizzle and smell that comes with sautéd onions (it's one of my favorite smells)

- While your onion is cooking, roast your slivered almonds and put to the side.  

There are 2 ways to roast almonds:   

1) Place the almonds on a baking sheet and put them in the oven heated to 375F (160C) for about 5-10 minutes.  Keep a close eye on them or else they might burn.  Take them out when they get a nice golden brown color.  

2) Heat a pan on medium heat (without oil) and swirl them around until they get that nice golden brown color.

- Once the onion is cooked (translucent), add the zucchini and carrots.  If need be, add another TBSP of olive oil.  Cook on medium heat for a good 10 minutes, until the carrots are about half way cooked.  Don't forget to stir every couple of minutes. 

- Drain the water from the quinoa bowl and add the quinoa and bouillon to your zucchini, carrot and onion pan.  Add a cup of water and the lemon juice.  Stir everything together and put a lid on it, letting it stew for a while.  

-After the water has been sucked up by the quinoa (about 10-15 mins) take a taste and see if it's cooked.  If not, ad another half cup of water.  Keep doing this until the quinoa is fully cooked, without there being water left over in the pan.

- Once cooked, put off to the side, and if you're opting for the tofu, put another pan on the stove on high, add some oil to the pan and let heat up.  

- Cut your tofu into pieces about 1/4 inch thick, and when the oil gets pretty hot, lay them out on the pan.  Let cook for a good 2-3 minutes (until the underside is a nice crispy, golden brown...but be careful to not pick up the tofu too often to check) and then flip, letting cook for another 2-3 mins.  

- Lay the tofu on a paper towel to drain any exces oil, while you serve the quinoa.  Once the stir-fry is on the places, place some slivered almonds on top.  Place the tofu.

-Enjoy!

The finished product.  My tofu is a little sad looking because the pan wasn't hot enough when I put it on.  The flash makes it look pretty weird, but I assure you, it's really good.

Welcome!

Hey everyone!

So, now that I've launched myself into making blogs, I can't get enough of them!  Not too sure if anyone reads them or not, but at least it lets me get my ideas out there, and maybe this one will be a little more helpful than Jean's Knits.

A while ago I asked myself the question: "Is it possible to eat well and healthy on a budget?"  In our household, we're two people and two cats, and we (the people) found ourselves being limited to pasta, potatoes and other foods that were cheap and quick to make, but not always the most healthy or appealing things.

So we decided to make a change and, this is the product.  It's a constant work in progress, but so far so good, and hopefully it'll just get better and better!


Some of what you can expect to find here:

-Since meat over here in France is fairly expensive, we eat it only when we really want it, or when someone gives us some (that's what boyfriend's mothers are good for right?), so if you're looking for a meaty good time, this is probably not the blog for you.

-Because we're living on such a budget, a lot of the same veggies and fruits will be used in a bunch of recipes, since we know we like them and know we can afford them.

-Also, since we're on the metric system over here, a lot of the recipes will probably have measurements in grams, so go ahead and invest in a kitchen scale.  They're really handy, and you can find them at a low cost (plus Alton Brown says you should just measure every ingredient with a scale because your proportions will be more exact).

-It's good to invest in a lasagna pan, because you can make so many things in it.  I found one for about $15, and we use it a couple of times a week.


Disclaimer:

- Since I am living in a foreign country, I'll do my best to find an American alternative if it's a product you can't find in the states.

- I'm not really good about making food look good in photos, but that's not what I'm after.  Be courageous and try it!  (plus the lighting in my kitchen is terrible, meaning I have to use flash in almost all my photos....)


Last but not least:

If you try out a recipe, but change something about it, let me know and I'll update the site.

Have a recipe you love?  Shoot me an e-mail, and we'll try it out :)


Questions or Comments?

E-mail: slindema89@gmail.com